Tales range from disregarded delivery instructions to phantom porches and a surprising number of parcels being hurled over fences and through front doors.

Shelley Mair, from Littlehampton, said she always asks couriers to leave packages with neighbours if she is not at home.

She said: “I have had parcels ‘left in the porch’, but I have no porch, and they’ve been left on the doorstep. I once had a parcel left in my recycling bin even though it was down the end of my driveway, clearly meaning it was bin day.

“Safe to say the bin men got a nice gift that day or maybe it was just crushed.”

Shelley is not alone. Sophie Lofts from Durrington said she came home from work to find her parcel had been left in the middle of the car park.

The delivery note revealed it had been left ‘behind front wheel black car’, which had subsequently driven off and ran over her package in the process.

Worthing’s Nina Shipley described twice seeing packages ‘being chucked over the fence’. She said: “I ran out and asked the person why – one ignored me and the other said ‘it just felt like clothes, it’s not broken’ and drove off.

“Two times I came home to find parcels that were too big to go through a letterbox had been physically squashed then rammed through, breaking the contents inside. Another time a parcel with ‘please do not bend’ in red letters across it had actually been bent in half to fit it in the letterbox.”

Commenting on the Littlehampton Gazette’s Facebook page, Nicky Long said the courier ‘opened my front door when I was home and threw my parcel inside’.

It was only the sound of the fragile item smashing, she said, that alerted her to the fact it had been ‘delivered’.

Polly Dymock said she had a parcel ‘jammed into a rose bush’ and two parcels thrown over a 7ft gate, bursting open to leave books lying in the rain.

The tales followed coverage of Arundel’s Carol Jones recalling how her parcel had been left in a ‘safe place’ – her black waste bin.

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